Love Garden Squid

Erika and I tend to schedule weird arts classes as dates. Normal enough, right? This spring at the Lawrence Arts Center, we signed up for a window display course, taught by Nick Stahl (who does design work for a few local business darlings) and Rosa Nussbaum (who makes inflatable and soft sculptures - we took her soft sculpture class this spring.)

The assignment was a group project: in just a few weeks, dream up and execute a window display for Love Garden, the downtown record store. Their logo is a squid.

This was really fun. The squid body is made of carpet padding, which is a weirdly good fit for the mottled skin of a cephalopod. It was sewing and fit over a skeleton made of PEX. And it turned out quite a bit like our original maquette / mockup:

It was definitely a group project where we split up to work on different things. Erika spearheaded the wavy foreground / background decorations. I took point on the eye - which is a nested series of plexy domes, with a looping video of different eyes behind it.

It glows really well and seems to follow you around a bit as you walk!